Attn all @themouthpiece email users....

Many @tmp.com mailboxes are becoming full, and so to avoid this I will be implementing a policy of Aging the mailboxes.

Mail aging is the process in which e-mails will be removed from the tMP server mailbox account automatically, upon successful log out of a pop3 session. Note though that this deletion will only occur if the messages are older than a specified period of days.

I will be setting this period initially to 60 days - so please understand that all messages older than 60 days will automatically be removed from your mailbox account. After a short period I will further reduce this period to 30 days.

Having had the lap top last summer, I obviously had the email accounts set up on it. I usually only keep what I really need, deleting all other. It was a bit of a shock to go back to the main computer, open up outlook and be landed with approximately 470 emails! While I'd be merrily deleting away on the laptop, it had only been deleting (help! technical bit here! ) from my local folder? and not deleting from the server, which had to be done from the main PC. Good ole Steve sorted that for me pretty smartish.

If you use pop3 to retrieve your tmp mail, then you will have a copy of each of your messages on your email client (Outlook etc).

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Actually, this is a user option for most POP3 e-mail clients (like Outlook, Thunderbird, ...). Somewhere in your account settings, you should be able to select either "leave messages on server" or "automatically download new messages" or something like that. I'm not sure what the standard setting is, but I think it is to download all new messages.

As far as I know the default for most POP3 PC client software (like Outlook Express, Outlook, etc.) is to download all new messages to the local machine and not to leave a copy on the server. You can check this in these 2 programs by going to tools>accounts, selecting the relevant mail account and clicking properties, then clicking the advanced tab. There should be a tickbox that says "Leave a copy of downloaded messages on the server" or something similar; by default this setting should be off (unticked). This tells the pop3 server not to keep copies of your messages after you've checked your email but will not affect the copies downloaded to your computer. Most mail servers will clear your mailbox by default when you've collected your mail unless specifically instructed otherwise. It sounds like the tMP mail server is a bit more generous and this is what is causing the storage problems?

*Any mac users should note that the default setting for the mail software in OSX seems to be the opposite; it leaves a copy on the pop3 server unless you specifically tell it not to. With my network admin hat on in work this gives me the hump 'cos none of my lazy scumbag mac users ever clear their mailboxes.

So if you've downloaded them off the server, you're not going to delete them??

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Yes I am Ben, because if you have downloaded all messages from the server then they are already on your local PC and therefore there is no need for them to remain on the tMP Server taking up space.

The way pop3 email works is that all received email is held on an email account on a mail webserver (tMP email server). When you log into this mail server and retrieve your messages (pop3), the messages are read from the mail server and copied to the local PC mail client application (eg: outlook). Once you have downloaded messages to your local mail client there is no real need to keep a copy of any mail on the web mail server. It is this that is causing the tMP Mail server accounts to become full. Once they are full you won't be able to retrieve further mail so the way to policy this is to implement Aging. Hence.... you know the rest.